


Lighting Up

by Jenni_Snake



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, Secrets, Smoking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-01
Updated: 2014-02-01
Packaged: 2018-01-10 19:07:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1163381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jenni_Snake/pseuds/Jenni_Snake
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Newt is a secret smoker, and somehow manages to keep it a secret from Hermann, even though everyone else in the Shatterdome seems to know.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lighting Up

**Author's Note:**

> For an excellently detailed [prompt](http://pacificrimkink.livejournal.com/2747.html?thread=4782267#t4782267), and my attempt to finish something quickly. Three hours later... voilà... *sigh* (Hope it's okay.)

“Newton, what are you doing?!” Hermann said, pulling him back through the window by the scruff of his neck.

Forlornly, Newt watched his cigarette fall to the ground as he let it go, more from surprise than from planning. At the shock of being jerked back, he swallowed his mouthful of smoke. It was all he could do to keep himself from coughing it right in Hermann’s face.

“I know it’s stressful,” Hermann continued, clasping Newt by the shoulders as he pleaded with him, “but it’s only once a year - you have to ask me if you need help. You can’t go trying to toss yourself out of the window!”

Face flushed, all Newt could do was shake his head and hope that his bulging eyes were giving him a pitiful rather than a guilty look.

“I have work to do in the LOCCENT, I can’t be keep an eye on you all day! Just promise me you won’t do anything like this ever again!”

Nodding repentantly, tears started to fall from Newt’s eyes as the scratching in his throat started to burn.

“It’s all right,” Hermann said, oblivious, “please don’t cry, I love you...”

He placed a gentle hand on Newt’s arm, the most he would do in public.

“Gottlieb!” somebody yelled from down the corridor, and Hermann excused himself with an apologetic, “I have to go…”

Newt waited until he was nearly out of sight before collapsing in in a fit of wheezing and coughing, bent over double, hands on his knees to keep himself upright. When he could finally breathe again and his eyes were dry, he put his glasses back on just in time to see Sasha Kaidanovsky striding towards him. She tossed a pack of Kents at him and he caught them against his chest.

“Geizsler, yours,” she said, all guttural vowels and bleached blond hair. “And for God’s sake, try to be more subtle.”

*

He dropped the yellowish butt with its singed white tip into the toilet bowl and blew one long last puff of smoke up towards the vent. With just enough force, he stepped on the handle to make the toilet flush fast enough to carry the spongy end into the pipes. The bowl filled with new water, all traces of his crime gone.

Before he could open the stall door, he heard the door to the bathroom open and a heavy set of footsteps pace in. In a panic, he jumped onto the seat, hoping he hadn’t been heard. There were a few more measured steps, then a pair of highly-polished black boots appeared in front of his door. Newt held his breath.

“Doctor Geizsler,” the Marshal intoned, “I have warned you in the past about PPDC policy regarding smoking in the building.”

Newt stayed quiet, not moving a muscle. Pentecost let out a short grunt.

“This is not at the top of my priority list,” he grumbled. “and frankly, it’s a waste of my time. I don’t need to be roaming the halls like some head of a middle school chasing after you every time someone lodges a complaint!”

Newt curled up, shrinking in on himself as the Marshal’s fury grew.

“Do I make myself clear?!”

Newt sighed timidly.

“Good,” Pentecost said, “that’s all I needed to hear.”

When Newt finally slunk from the bathroom, he headed for the mess hall so he could make sure he had some food in his mouth before Hermann found him, too.

*

“Newt, what the hell?” Tendo asked.

The wind was whipping the rain against the wall where Newt stood under the awning where they met for an afternoon break. He was usually warm enough to not bother with a jacket, but now he was soaked to the bone, glasses splattered with droplets.

“What the hell yourself!” he said, shivering, arms across his chest. “Where the fuck have you been? I’ve been dying for a smoke.”

“I’ve been cutting down,” Tendo said, stretching his arm up to reveal a patch under his jacket sleeve.

“Good for fucking you,” Newt snapped. “I’ve got stuff - I can quit whenever I need to. Besides, you’re still out here, too, you know.”

Tendo shrugged.

“I’m not the one who looks like a drowned rat,” he said out of the corner of his mouth as he cupped his hand around his lighter and the tip of two cigarettes and passed one over. Newt was too grateful to make a retort as he took his first drag.

Minutes later in the bathroom, he ducked his head under the hand dryer and pulled at his shirt so it wouldn’t stick to his skin. At least he wouldn’t have to explain the smell of smoke on his clothes to Hermann this time.

*

His chair spun to a stop, but his head felt like it kept going, so he spun back around the other way. When he stopped again, he puffed up his cheeks and let his breath out slowly. There was a collection of coffee mugs on his desk, and he peeked into each one, finding nothing but a faint ring at the bottom of the first three. In the fourth one, the stained butt that he had crushed out earlier rolled along the bottom. Time was crawling by, like it did every time he had to wait to do a second wash of frog zygotes, and he wondered how long it had been since his last cigarette, and if it was too soon to have another.

He checked his watch and nearly fell out of his chair. Lunging at his desk drawer, he yanked it open. He rummaged through to the back, pulled out a package of gum that felt conspicuously light, and cursed himself for having put it back after having had the last piece. He wondered what the hell he had been thinking as he gathered it up with a small empty bottle of mouthwash and a handful of mint wrappers, and tossed them into the trash. For a brief moment it dawned on him what it must be like for Hermann to live with him, but it was him living with Hermann that was first on his mind at the moment.

A quick search of Hermann’s desk unsurprisingly revealed nothing more than a neatly arranged tray of new pieces of chalk and a tidily stored slide rule, so Newt darted out of the lab. He didn’t know exactly where his feet were carrying him until he banged on the familiar door.

“Doctor, it’s so late!” Mako exclaimed, worried. “Is everything all right?”

“Sorry Mako,” Newt said, leaning on the doorframe out of breath, “more of a personal call. Do you have any gum?”

He glanced nervously down the hallway as if a kaiju was going to jump out from behind a wall. He imagined it would be nothing compared to Hermann’s wrath if he ever found out his dirty little secret. Mako sighed.

“You know,” she lectured as she searched her dresser and desk drawers with painstaking methodicalness, “it really is very bad for you. You should try to stop. If not for you, then at least for Doctor Gottlieb.”

Flippantly, she handed over a package of gum, her very posture exuding disapproval. Newt forced a smile that turned into more of a sneer.

“Yeah, thanks for the relationship advice. And the gum.”

Mako merely shook her head as he crammed a few pieces into his mouth and shot off down the hallway.

He made it back to the lab with five minutes to spare, and, just for good measure, spat out the gum and downed the last inch of cold coffee that was leftover in another cup. Since it was not only stale but cold, it tasted even more like old pencil shavings than usual. Then, in an effort to look natural, he pulled a file towards him, but realized he was going about it the wrong way, and instead leaned all the way back in his chair with his feet up on his desk and his hands behind his head and closed his eyes.

Like clockwork, at eleven on the dot, he heard Hermann’s distinctive step at the door of the lab. He opened his eyes as he was kissed upside down. A vague look of disappointment passed over Hermann’s face as he cringed.

“I can still taste the coffee,” he complained. "And it's worse than usual."

Newt laughed nervously, thankful that Hermann wouldn’t be able to tell the taste of a cigarette if it blew into his face. He spread his hands apologetically.

“Sorry, babe, got to stay awake," he said, gesturing to his collection of mugs. "You know, zygote-sitting.”

Hermann ran a hand over Newt’s hair and kissed him on the forehead.

“Of course. _Viel Glück_ ,” he said, letting the words roll off his tongue.

“ _Danke_ ,” Newt replied, hating the sound of his own Americanized accent in comparison, even though he liked how it made the corners of Hermann’s eyes crinkle as he smiled. Newt watched moonily as Hermann walked away.

Alone again, he started drumming his fingers on the desk. He knew Hermann wouldn’t be back. His drumming got louder.

It wasn’t for another full fifteen minutes that he lit up another cigarette.

*

“How long?” Hermann demanded simply.

Newt didn’t know how he hadn’t heard Hermann come in, but he had been caught red handed. Smoke curled up from the charred tip of the cigarette he held between his fingers. He had a desperate urge to flick the end repeatedly with his thumb, but used all his concentration not to. All sorts of different lies stumbled over each other in his brain, but the truth was the only one that left his lips.

“Ten years,” he said quietly. Hermann looked deflated.

“How much?” he asked.

“One a week. A pack. A week. Sometimes two.”

As Hermann dropped his eyes to the floor, searching for words, Newt finally crushed the nearly-new cigarette out in a dirty coffee mug. There was nothing that had prepared him for this kind of measured, calm assault, and he was completely unaware of how to respond.

“It’s your health I worry about,” Hermann said sadly.

A wave of scorn hit Newt and he shot back tersely.

“Well, that’s kind of the point, right? It’s _my_ health.”

Hermann opened his mouth, then closed it again: he had no fight in him, and Newt was caught off his guard. After a long pause, Hermann’s shoulders fell.

“I’ll see you at dinner,” he said, trying to sound casual, even plastering a convincing smile onto his face before he turned to leave.

Newt snarled quietly at his back as he walked away. It was his life and his choice, he huffed as he plunked himself down in his chair. He picked up the pack that he had left on the desk, flicked it open with his thumb, and stopped. It was his life, but Hermann, too, was a part of that life. Turning in his chair, he paused just a moment, as if saying goodbye to an old friend, before crushing the pack in his hand and tossing it into the garbage.

He chewed nervously on his thumb as he stared at it, keeping himself from diving for it again, and for the first time in a long while caught a whiff of the stench that was soaked into his skin.

After a moment, he pulled open the bottom drawer of his desk and took out a another packet.

He popped a piece of nicotine gum into his mouth and made his way to the mess hall.


End file.
